thomas6
38 posts
Jul 31, 2011
6:22 PM
|
50S wrestlin,now i don't remember any other wrestler's name just "Chief don eagle"because when he done had enough,he did his indian dance and kicked butt,now i believe it was out east 5th,the reason for that is we walked everywere and so.... wrestling wasn't quite like it became,there were wreslin midgets and wrestlin women,and popcorn
|
delcodude
186 posts
Jul 31, 2011
8:59 PM
|
A friend of mine's dad ran Killer Brooks off the road in his car after he'd won a controversial match (not Killer?) at Hara Arena that day. He supposedly told him (Brooks) to "put that in your elbow pad and use it" Crazy East End people I'll tell ya, haha..
|
rodat6
190 posts
Aug 01, 2011
2:35 AM
|
There was also Gorgeous George. This was in the late Forties, early Fifties, neighbors would gather at our place and watch wrestling like it was real. LOL Mom would cook popcorn in the microwave. Just put a bag or two of Orville Reddenbacher's popcorn in, hit the popcorn button and 2 minutes later, plenty of hot popcorn. LOL Okay I made the microwave part up.
|
PaulH
43 posts
Aug 01, 2011
3:27 AM
|
How about Magnificent Maurice & Hansom Johnny Baron tag team?
----------
|
jfox68
26 posts
Aug 01, 2011
4:25 AM
|
And Flying Fred Curry and his dad Bull.
|
Ol'Roy
6 posts
Aug 01, 2011
4:33 AM
|
Magnificent Maurice and Handsome Johnny! I remember seeing them on the live studio wrestling show on channel 2 back in the early sixties. Omar Williams hosted the show and did the play-by-play of the matches. I'm sure it was the highlight of his long career.
The shows were really just advertising to set up matches later at East Fifth Recreation in Dayton and Hobart Arena in Troy. The local promoter was a vertically-challenged gentleman named Mickey Friedman, who later went on to fame and fortune as owner of a bunch of local dirty book stores. There was also a woman who was at ringside every show named Bouncing Buelah. She would yell, scream and pound on the mat at the bad guys.
Maurice and Handsome were the most prominent villians. The good guys were Chief White Owl, Bobo Brazil, Buddy Rogers and Frankie Tallaber among others.
As kids watching these matches, we knew they were faked. We would watch how the various wrestling holds and moves, including the Piledriver and the Figure-4 Leg-Lock, were done. Then we would go out in the yard and have our own wrestling program.
I got pretty good at the Figure-4 and was the master of the Piledriver. None of us ever got hurt. We were as good at faking as the real wrestlers.
One of our guys, though, got a little carried away. He told us one day that he was working on perfecting a sleeper hold. We might have been kids but, we knew we didn't want that guy to try that hold on us! That was the end of our wrestling careers, right then and there.
Ol'Roy
|
JeffN
411 posts
Aug 02, 2011
12:24 PM
|
I used to love the Sheik, who ran the shows at Hara Areana (and in Detriot, Toledo, Cinci, etc). One of the greats of all time.
|
delcodude
187 posts
Aug 02, 2011
1:11 PM
|
My favorites were The Mighty Igor, The Stomper, Flying Fred Curry, and my most favorite villain was The Sheik. The Sheik would fill Hara by his drooling, fire-throwing, foreign object wielding-self. Remember that phrase by the commentators, 'Looks like he's got a foreign object in his hand' Huh, must be why that guys' forehead's all cut up..
|
PaulH
45 posts
Aug 03, 2011
5:38 PM
|
Got another one from those days. Haystack Calhoun.
----------
|
JeffN
413 posts
Aug 04, 2011
10:01 AM
|
delcodude ... I remember the night the Stomper and Ben Justice beat the Kangaroos for the world tag title. What a blast.
|
delcodude
189 posts
Aug 04, 2011
12:57 PM
|
Hey JeffN:
Wow, I'd forgotten the Kangaroos. What a gimmick. I remember watching that match from home. I remember one with The Stomper and BoBo Brazil vs. The Sheik and Bull Curry. BoBo was pummeling the Sheik with his 'foreign object' that he'd taken from him, before Killer Brooks came from out of nowhere (Oh, no!!!, my best Mr. Bill) and hit him with a folding metal chair (no way? way?). The Stomper then put The Sheik in The Sleeper, but somehow the match was called a draw. No way? Way... The bloodiest match I ever saw on tv..
Last Edited by on Aug 04, 2011 1:01 PM
|
Nile
27 posts
Aug 06, 2011
3:00 PM
|
There were lots. Yukon Eric, Angelo Poffo, Don Snyder, Farmer Brown, Bearcat Ryan, Dick The Bruiser, Nick The Crusher, Carpontier, Cowboy Bob Ellis, Sweet Daddy Zeekie, some German von something or other, Moose Cholak, I'll bet I can think of others as we go. Yes, it was fake but we watched it anyway. By the way, Angelo Poffo was the father of Randy Savage "Macho Man".
|
Bill68
101 posts
Oct 30, 2011
1:38 PM
|
Kato was a Japanese who stomped the floor like a Sumo wrestler.
|
DOUG69
3 posts
Nov 02, 2011
10:24 PM
|
MY fAV WAS BO BO BRAZIL. HE WOULD ALWAS GET BEAT DOWN THEN TURN ON HIS FOE AND GIVE HIM THE PATENTED BO BO HEAD BASH TO WIN!
|
Ol'Roy
16 posts
Nov 16, 2011
9:52 AM
|
I just ran across the obituary of Handsome Johnny Barend who died on September 20 in Avon, NY. Handsome and his tag team partner, Magnificent Maurice, wrestled often in Dayton in the late 50's and early 60's.
It turned out they were big national wrestling stars, not just in the midwest. Barend was especially popular in Hawaii.
In TV wrestling show interviews with the late Omar Williams of Channel 2, Barend and Maurice would refer to the local citizenry as a bunch of farmers. They didn't mean it as a compliment. Watching this as kids, we thought this was hilariously funny.
|
KenC3
3 posts
Dec 11, 2011
11:51 PM
|
Gee. I remember Ruffy Silverstein and Lord Blears. Don't remember Ruffy ever winning a match but everyone liked him.
We went over where Western Ave. split and part went to Westwood and the other street went down and crossed Wolf Creek. It was near Dayton Tire.
Don Eagle was another favorite during those years. It was not on TV back then.
|
rr52c
16 posts
Dec 12, 2011
11:41 AM
|
Ol'Roy I remember I came back to New Jersey in November 1965 when I was discharged from service. When there I watched a tag team match with Johnny Barend and Maurice and believe it or not, Buddy Rodgers was their manager. I remember they fought like they were going to kill each other when they were in Dayton.
|
Mike C
65 posts
Dec 17, 2011
9:45 PM
|
thomas6, you are right about the ring being there. It was at the corner of E. Fifth and Pine street. I think it is the EPA office now. You can still tell what it was if you knew what it was before.I remember going there and watching the raslin' with my grandmother and my dad. She was one of those crazy ladies that would yell at the wrestlers and get down there on the floor next to the ring and yell at them. The cigarette and cigar smoke was so think in that place you could hardly see at times and hot as a furnace the later it got. Air conditioning - Ha, ha. They had a few small windows they'd open.
|
thomas6
57 posts
Dec 21, 2011
9:55 PM
|
thanks mike i just knew it was in that area,i was young when i got to go,my mother loved all that,she probably knew your grandma,they probably yelled together,my mother would have a lucky strike hanging out her mouth,ashes falling all over the place,there was a bar near there also,had to be eastside rowdy,i remember lots of fights from the step of the bar stool i sat with my feet around,a couple of times someone going though the window..........memories
|
